Artists:

• Early Music Orchestra of the Mykola Lysenko Lviv National Music Academy (Artistic Director – Anna Ivaniushenko)
• Stanisław Welanyk, conductor (Poland)

Program:

• Jean-Féry Rebel (1666–1747). Les éléments; Simphonie nouvelle
• Heinrich Ignaz Franz von Biber (1644–1704). Battalia à 10 (1673)
• Henryk Mikołaj Górecki (1933–2010). Three Pieces in Old Style
• Charles Ives (1874–1954). The Unanswered Question

A musical parable about existence itself, the concert Dedicatio on November 20 will open the renowned Festival of Early Music in Lviv, now in its 22nd edition.

This year’s program presents a special collaboration embodying the essence of historical performance:
the Early Music Orchestra of the Lysenko Academy, representing the new generation of musicians, will perform under the baton of the distinguished Polish conductor Stanisław Welanyk — a long-time friend and “elder statesman” of Baroque music and of the Festival itself. Experience and youthful energy will unite to reveal both the spirit of early 17th-century music and its echoes in the works of 20th-century composers.

Jean-Féry Rebel’s Les éléments; Simphonie nouvelle is a true Baroque experiment in sound — a musical vision of chaos and cosmic creation. The opening depicts the formation of the universe — a kind of “musical cosmogony.” As the composer himself explained:

“The introduction to this symphony came naturally — it was even Chaos itself, that confusion which reigned among the elements until, obeying immutable laws, they took the place assigned to them in the order of nature.”

In contrast to Rebel’s cosmic turmoil, Biber’s Battalia à 10 captures the human drama of war — vivid, humorous, and poignant in its musical portrayal of battle.

Next comes Henryk Mikołaj Górecki’s Three Pieces in Old Style — a modern reflection on the past. Drawing on Renaissance forms, Górecki transforms them with his own expressive minimalism. Legend has it that the final movement was inspired by a dance once performed at the wedding of King Sigismund II Augustus.

The concert reaches its existential conclusion with Charles Ives’s The Unanswered Question — a timeless meditation on the eternal human search for meaning. After the creation of the world, the wars fought upon it, and the rediscovery of harmony, only one thing remains — the question that has no answer.